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[Skyrunner]

GUI work from scratch is so infuriatingly annoying It makes me really appreciate the event-drivin GUI framework that Javascript uses. Working on a GUI for my ship game to equip parts is taking me forever just because I don't like it and can't concentrate.

[Angle]

Yeah, I'm doing GUI work for the Agora Client right now, and it is indeed a pain in the ass, even with the library features included in java.

[Reelya]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice on the best packages to drop a user accounts system into a php-based website. I made a thread about it in life advice, here but thought I'd mention it here since many people probably don't check out that board.. If anyone has any advice on where to look, please let me know, it would be highly appreciated.

[GlyphGryph]

GUI work from scratch is so infuriatingly annoying It makes me really appreciate the event-drivin GUI framework that Javascript uses. Working on a GUI for my ship game to equip parts is taking me forever just because I don't like it and can't concentrate.

Why not use an already existing GUI framework then?

[Skyrunner]

Well, I'm using libtcod. I doubt that there is a libtcod widget framework...

[Gatleos]

Oh jeez, I hope you're not still using that crummy libtcod engine I made sky.

But yes, gui work is extremely tedious; the longer the iteration time, the worse it gets. Run the program, tweak the button position, run it again, now you have to move that divider over for more room, run it again...

[Skyrunner]

I actually am using that libtcod engine, how did you know? In fact, I'm using the very first one you made and tacked on a crummy state system that's nevertheless serviceable for simple menus. It also has a pretty bad interstate communication system, which helps in giving me a headache when doing menus.

[Gatleos]

I made quite a few changes to that engine, and most of it was taking things out. I think the problem a lot of coders run into with OOP (myself formerly included) is making functions, classes, etc. that just try to do too much. A function or class should do its job, hand back the data it needs to, then just get out of the way. things are so much cleaner and simpler that way.

The state system ended up just being a stack of them, with each state having a pointer to the previous one on the stack. So you could make a call like

Code: [Select]

prev->render();at the beginning of the current state's render function, and it would draw that state on top of the previous one. I'm sure there are more sophisticated ways to do it, but meh. On the other hand, nothing I ever try makes gui programming any less tedious.

[Skyrunner]

The change i did to your engine was to not use the prev pointer and not pass around a reference to the main stack. Instead, the TCODEngine class calls the render() function by traversing the stack from front to back, meaning I can do pretty cool color blending things. The states can now easily look like windows popped up.

I think the TCODEngine thing is perfectly fine, though. It has a set of inheritable functions that do discrete things (render this, handle key event, update internal logic, clean up pointers...), all linked into a logical class of 'TCODEngine'.

One weird thing though was that it kinda felt that the states didn't call ~State() before being popped.

[Gatleos]

Yeah, the reason for the prev pointer was JUST IN CASE I didn't want stacks to print in order like that. It works either way really. Glad you got some use out of it anyway.

[Johuotar]

So I'm following this roguelike tutorial but I'm using c# and I don't know how I should translate the sneaky trick #1 on article 3 to c#.

http://www.kathekonta.com/rlguide/article3.html

I thought about making the tileindex object array, but I heard its not very efficient and this needs to be used a lot. Friend suggested using 4 arrays, with one as the index number list and the others could have the char, int and bool. I've also googled about hashtables and dictionaries and now I'm just confused at what solution would be simplest and would not cause me troubles later on when expanding the game.

Can you suggest good future proof solution? I really want to learn the best practices early on.

[Skyrunner]

For starters, "making the tileindex object array is not very efficient" is not good reason to not use it. Optimization without info about how inefficient it actually is is a bad thing to do. It makes programming slower and gives you a headache for like 10 cpu ticks' efficiency.

If you'd ask me, I'd make a Struct with all your data (tile shape, color, ...), then put them in a Dictionary <(index type), Tile>. The index type could be a int or it could be a string--I like using strings for IDs because they're immediately readable and in the case of Python and maybe C#, they're immutable so aren't very inefficient.

The reason I would use a struct for Tile is because C# is not duck-typed, so I can't easily stuff all the data I want into a single data structure.

Using 4 arrays is not something you'd want to do for future-proofing. What happens if you want to make another data type? You need to create another array and all the annoying stuff thst goes with it.

[da_nang]

So I'm following this roguelike tutorial but I'm using c# and I don't know how I should translate the sneaky trick #1 on article 3 to c#.

http://www.kathekonta.com/rlguide/article3.html

I thought about making the tileindex object array, but I heard its not very efficient and this needs to be used a lot. Friend suggested using 4 arrays, with one as the index number list and the others could have the char, int and bool. I've also googled about hashtables and dictionaries and now I'm just confused at what solution would be simplest and would not cause me troubles later on when expanding the game.

Can you suggest good future proof solution? I really want to learn the best practices early on.

Couldn't you just use classes? Or enums if you feel brave.

Code: (Pseudocode) [Select]

public class Tiles {

    private Map<Integer, Tile> tiles

    //Insert constructor to read in tiles from say a text file with injection.

    public int nColorCode(int type) {return tiles.get(type).color();}
    public char nCharacter(int type) {return tiles.get(type).character();}

}

public class Tile {

    private int color;
    private char character;

    //Insert constructor

    public int color() {return color;}
    public char character() {return character;}

}


[Johuotar]

Thank for the answers, they mean much to me and very helpful.  Here is what I ended up doing:

Code: [Select]

public class Tile
    {
        public struct TILE_TYPE
        {
            public string nCharacter;
            public int nColorCode;
            public bool bPassable;
        }
        //this is made to save colors as int values instead of as strings which cant be converted intrically to Console.color
        public ConsoleColor[] colors = (ConsoleColor[])ConsoleColor.GetValues(typeof(ConsoleColor));
        //int key followed by values for the tile's char, colorcode and passability
        public Dictionary<int, TILE_TYPE> sTileIndex = new Dictionary<int, TILE_TYPE>()
        {
            { 0, new TILE_TYPE {nCharacter=".", nColorCode= 1, bPassable=true}},
            { 1, new TILE_TYPE {nCharacter="#", nColorCode= 2, bPassable=false}},
            { 2, new TILE_TYPE {nCharacter=">", nColorCode= 8, bPassable=true}},
            { 3, new TILE_TYPE {nCharacter="<", nColorCode= 5, bPassable=true}},
            { 4, new TILE_TYPE {nCharacter="|", nColorCode= 4, bPassable=true}},
            { 5, new TILE_TYPE {nCharacter="+", nColorCode= 9, bPassable=false}}
        };
    }

Code: [Select]

void DrawTile(int x, int y)
        {
            Tile tile = new Tile();

            Console.SetCursorPosition(x, y);
            int nType = Map.nMapArray[y, x];
            //x and y position is saved to nType
            Console.ForegroundColor = tile.colors[tile.sTileIndex[nType].nColorCode];
            //Writing Color is changed to colorcode of the value of nType in the tileindex in Tile class
            Console.Write(tile.sTileIndex[nType].nCharacter);
        }

[Gatleos]

"string" == 0
"string" == TRUE
TRUE != 0

The comparison operator does not have the transitive property.

The comparison operator has no transitive property.
When using it on basic built-in types.

Why hasn't this whole language been nuked from orbit again?